This was not going the way Cameron had imagined. They were alone in the deserted streets, speaking in low voices as they walked close together through circles of lamplight and pools of darkness, but there was no feeling of intimacy. They were more like people making small talk. All the same he was not giving up. ‘I want us to be close friends,’ he said.
‘We already are,’ she replied with a touch of impatience.
They reached Great Peter Street and still he had not said what he wanted to say. As they approached the house he stopped. She took another step forward, so he grabbed her arm and held her back. ‘Evie,’ he said, ‘I’m in love with you.’
‘Oh, Cam, don’t be ridiculous.’
Cameron felt as if he had been punched.
Evie tried to walk on. Cameron gripped her arm more tightly, not caring now if he hurt her. ‘Ridiculous?’ he said. There was an embarrassing quaver in his voice, and he spoke again more firmly. ‘Why should it be ridiculous?’
‘You don’t know anything,’ she said in a tone of exasperation.
This was a particularly hurtful reproach. Cameron prided himself on knowing a great deal, and he had imagined that she liked him for that. ‘What don’t I know?’ he said.
She pulled her arm out of his grasp with a vigorous jerk. ‘I’m in love with Jasper, you idiot,’ she said, and she went into the house.
13
In the morning, while it was still dark, Rebecca and Bernd made love again.
They had been living together three months, in the old town house in Berlin-Mitte. It was a big house, which was fortunate, for they shared it with her parents, Werner and Carla, plus her brother Walli and her sister Lili, and Grandmother Maud.
For a while, love had consoled them for all they had lost. Both were out of work, prevented from getting jobs by the secret police – despite East Germany’s desperate shortage of schoolteachers.
But both were under investigation for social parasitism, the crime of being unemployed in a Communist country. Sooner or later they would be convicted and jailed. Bernd would go to a prison labour camp, where he would probably die.
So they were going to escape.
Today was their last full day in East Berlin.
When Bernd slid his hand gently up Rebecca’s nightdress, she said: ‘I’m too nervous.’
‘We may not have many more chances,’ he said.
She grabbed him and clung to him. She knew he was right. They might both die attempting to flee.
Worse, one might die and one might live.
Bernd reached for a condom. They had agreed that they would marry when they reached the free world, and avoid pregnancy until then. If their plans should go wrong, Rebecca did not want to raise a child in East Germany.
Despite all the fears that troubled her, Rebecca was overcome by desire, and responded energetically to Bernd’s touch. Passion was a recent discovery for her. She had mildly enjoyed sex with Hans, most of the time, and with two previous lovers, but she had never before been flooded with desire, possessed by it so completely that for a while she forgot everything else. Now the thought that this could be the last time made her desire even more intense.
After it was over he said: ‘You’re a tiger.’
She laughed. ‘I never was before. It’s you.’
‘It’s us,’ he said. ‘We’re right.’
When she had caught her breath, she said: ‘People escape every day.’
‘No one knows how many.’
Escapers swam across canals and rivers, they climbed barbed wire, they hid in cars and trucks. West Germans, who were allowed into East Berlin, brought forged West German passports for their relatives. Allied troops could go anywhere, so one East German man bought a US Army uniform at a theatrical costume shop and walked through a checkpoint unchallenged.
Rebecca said: ‘And many die.’
The border guards showed no mercy and no shame. They shot to kill. They sometimes left the wounded to bleed to death in no-man’s-land, as a lesson to others. Death was the penalty for trying to leave the Communist paradise.
Rebecca and Bernd were planning to escape via Bernauer Strasse.
One of the grim ironies of the Wall was that in some streets the buildings were in East Berlin but the sidewalk was in the West. Residents of the east side of Bernauer Strasse had opened their front doors on Sunday, 13 August 1961 to find a barbed-wire fence preventing them from stepping outside. At first, many leaped from upstairs windows to freedom – some injuring themselves, others jumping on to a blanket held by West Berlin firemen. Now all those buildings had been evacuated, their doors and windows boarded up.
Rebecca and Bernd had a different plan.
They got dressed and went down to breakfast with the family – probably their last for a long time. It was a tense repeat of the same meal on 13 August last year. On that occasion, the family had been sad and anxious: Rebecca had been planning to leave, but not at the risk of her life. This time they were scared.
Rebecca tried to be cheerful. ‘Maybe you’ll all follow us across the border one day,’ she said.
Carla said: ‘You know we aren’t going to do that. You must go – you have no life left here. But we’re staying.’
‘What about Father’s work?’
‘For now, I carry on,’ Werner said. He was no longer able to go to the factory he owned because it was in West Berlin. He was trying to manage it remotely, but that was nearly impossible. There was no telephone service between the two Berlins, so he had to do everything by mail, which was always liable to be delayed by the censors.
This was agony for Rebecca. Her family was the most important thing in the world to her, but she was being forced to leave them. ‘Well, no wall lasts forever,’ she said. ‘One day Berlin will be reunited, and then we can be together again.’
There was a ring at the doorbell, and Lili jumped up from the table. Werner said: ‘I hope that’s the postman with the factory accounts.’
Walli said: ‘I’m going to cross the Wall as soon as I can. I’m not going to spend my life in the East, with some old Communist telling me what music to play.’
Carla said: ‘You can make your own decision – as soon as you’re an adult.’
Lili came back into the kitchen looking scared. ‘It’s not the postman,’ she said. ‘It’s Hans.’
Rebecca let out a small scream. Surely her estranged husband could not know about her escape plan?
Werner said: ‘Is he alone?’
‘I think so.’
Grandma Maud said to Carla: ‘Remember how we dealt with Joachim Koch?’
Carla looked at the children. Obviously they were not supposed to know how Joachim Koch had been dealt with.
Werner went to the kitchen cupboard and opened the bottom drawer. It contained heavy pans. He pulled the drawer all the way out and set it on the floor. Then he reached deep into the cavity and brought out a black pistol with a brown grip and a small box of ammunition.
Bernd said: ‘Jesus.’
Rebecca did not know much about guns, but she thought it was a Walther P38. Werner must have kept it after the war.
What had happened to Joachim Koch, Rebecca wondered? Had he been killed?
By Mother? And Grandma?
Werner said to Rebecca: ‘If Hans Hoffmann takes you out of this house we will never see you again.’ Then he began to load the gun.
Carla said: ‘He may not be here to arrest Rebecca.’
‘True,’ said Werner. He said to Rebecca: ‘Talk to him. Find out what he wants. Scream if you need to.’
Rebecca stood up. Bernd did the same. ‘Not you,’ Werner said to Bernd. ‘The sight of you might anger him.’
‘But—’
Rebecca said: ‘Father’s right. Just be ready to come if I call.’
‘All right.’
Rebecca took a deep breath, made herself calm, and went into the hall.
Hans stood there in his new blue-grey suit, wearing a striped tie that Rebecca had given him for his last birthday. He said: ‘I got the divorce papers.’
Rebecca nodded. ‘You were expecting them, of course.’
‘Can we talk about it?’
‘Is there anything to say?’
‘Perhaps.’